The Matrix - Re-Evolution!!

Dustykitten

Morning all

Still feeling grim with my sore throat and temperature so another pottering day. Could be worse, I love to potter. I plan to get my mending (hand and machine) done, finish my knitting, do some paperwork, make soup,make crumble and stroke a cat or 3 oh and read Saturday's newspaper (first one we have bought in about 2 months).

I've been cleaning some old brass window furniture I've been offered for my new windows. Carpenter is not keen but I love the feel of the old brass. Vinegar truly is a wonderful thing. I'll set another piece, a stay to soak whilst I have a shower and then see how it comes up. May take a photo of before and after.

Memory_Girl

Morning ladies - all excited today as I put together the sofa cushions - at long last all the grunt work is done:j

But first I am off to make a batch of Olive Oil and Goats milk soap and put it up on the blog as requested.

Rainy and cold here today - but the kids want to bake so I will run out and get some eggs first then we can snuggle down.


Cheery Bye

MG

Horace

Morning all

I too can remember a time when we were poor - it was after dad had a car accident and ended up in hospital for a long time. Mum did farm work (tending cows, digging up potatoes, pulling beetroot, picking goosegogs) and I had free school dinners. Mum was quite inventive and a small tin of meat would go along way. She learnt to sew and that way I could have new clothes - she used to put cardboard in her shoes too when they wore out...this was back in the early 70's. We didnt have central heating then either.

In my flat, I only have electric heating and when there was a massive power outage taking out the whole street for more than a day - I had ice on the inside of my windows, a transistor radio, a head torch and a windup torch and my bed which I got into fully clothed complete with ski hat:eek: I only have one tv and my ex bf used to whinge and whine because I didnt have a tv in the bedroom, I still don't because bedrooms are for sleeping in and not watching tv in. I do have a portable DVD player that he bought me (the first one he bought broke) and that is used sometimes to watch DVDs in bed or if there is nothing on the tv.

I may be extremely skint but I don't class myself as being poor. These days they classify poor as not being able to have 2 foreign holidays per year, not having a tv in every room and that tv must be a 42 inch flat screen:eek: Had to smile earlier, one of the local radio programmes (joanne malin) was going to feature a family who were getting £80 a week dole money and they couldnt really live on that..try living on £51 a week then you would have something to moan about:mad: Still, I am doing what I can to make ends meet.

Feeling unwell today, I have ear ache and a thumping headache and I feel extremely queasy - nearly passing out on Tesco carpark this morning where I had been for another bout of extreme couponning. Best crack on, I have carrots to chop and onions to peel as I am going to use Pot to make a sausage casserole.

clairewop

Good morning,

Went back to bed this morning, woke up with a headache from hell all ok now

DW on, cadged some DW tablets from friend there was no way I was washing a DW full of plates pots and pans by hand lol,

Getting fed up of the house looking like a pigsty now, why is it when children are home even though you have cleaned it always looks a mess??

Kittikins

The sort out is going great guns - one boot load of tut taken to the dump this morning, a huge bag of DD's old clothes passed down to a little friend, and I can now see the floor in the cupboard over the stairs (aka my wardrobe!!). I know it sounds like such a little thing, but to know exactly what's in there is very pleasing

As OH is here today, I might tackle the understairs cupboard as that's always the cupboard of doom, rather than leave him down here on his tod whilst I start sorting out the mess under my bed, as that really is not a pretty place to go, dust and tut city!!!

Felt good to strike 2 things off my massive to do list though

Re: being poor - I know and am very grateful for being relatively rich. I may occasionally moan about being 'skint' but I'm not really, other than my mortgage, I have no debt, a nice car (ok, parental loan to finish paying off), a job I'm generally happy in, fantastic friends and OH and the most wonderful DD. She knows that things cost money and that even credit cards aren't free (!!) and she'll say things like Mummy, we're rich aren't we? Rich in Love (so at least some of the things I say sink in with her, lol).

Right, better see if the dodgy soup I made in the slow cooker yesterday has been successfully rescued with the addition of a few bits and pieces, or it'll be mixed with pesto and pasta for dinner later! Not wasting all those lovely veggies, nomnomnom....

Update: yes, it was rescued, we just ate enough to sink a battleship! Phew!

MrsMoo2U

MG, I just noticed that your posts have a pink background....... how girlie is that then?

I wasn't meaning that children with or without tvs are necessarily poor (GB I dont have one either - we are strange to most people but we know differently;))
what I was trying to say is that poverty is measured on the acceptable standard of living in each country, therefore the 1 in 10 children based on the poverty index will probably be right. Given the changes to the benefit systems and index linked rises I would expect that far more children will start to experience the *povery* that some of us knew as a child. I made my childhood sound bleak but it truly wasnt. It was hard sometimes but on the whole I loved life. Tricia, what your father said about not knowing they were poor is probably true of most people of his generation. The issue today is that children mix with all sectors of society and the access to tv/books/internet means that the education is there to help them to understand that there are people out there who have much more. I guess in your fathers day they only had radio and limited access to books and newspapers and would have socialised in a smaller community.

MG, as Tricia's father said he didnt know he was poor, all of the parents on this thread are doing a fantastic job of bringing their children up to respect and value money and material items so they will understand that poverty can be more about lack of compassion and time to stop and smell the roses as lack of STUFF!

Memory_Girl

If you mean the pink room - yup its pink - think licorice allsorts pink:D

But its my kitchen and it makes me smile.

Just spent an hour learning a new way of putting in a zip - and then did the other 7 in about 20 minutes :rotfl: There is a Zen lesson in there somewhere.

Been listening to a Talking book about a Midwife in London's East End in the 50's - when the old Dears could still remember the Workhouses and having their children taken away from them. h Boy and I so glad I live in the here and now.

However - just down to get the camera cos I promised piccies

Back soon

MG

MrsMoo2U

i am so looking forward to these pictures. It feels like Christmas.

maryb

You can never eliminate relative poverty unless you eliminate all differentials of income, mathematical fact given that it is defined as a percentage of average income. Beveridge, the architect of the Welfare State wasn't concerned with eliminating relative poverty he wanted to slay the five giants - want, ignorance, squalor, disease and idleness. When you look at it like that, in terms of real fundamentals, you realise how far we've come. Although they have never managed to get rid of idleness other than in the few years when they managed to run a full employment policy without wrecking the economy.

I think the people who didn't feel poor when they were young even if they were in want were the ones whose parents refused to succumb to squalor. Even in areas of bad housing, the ones who lived the best lives they could and kept their dignity tend to be the ones whose children look back and see that their parents had a hard time but despite it all they were happy.

Translating that to today, anyone who has a loving family of hard working adults, who values education and uses the library, eats well and is healthy, and whose home is welcoming and clean and cozy (even if it's not physically that warm) has all the essentials and can't be said to be truly poor. But I do also understand why social exclusion matters too. If you can't afford to go swimming (and round here the charges for the Council pool and gym are on a par with private health clubs) if you can't learn a musical instrument if you really yearn to, if you can't travel even in the UK, it's hard to feel you are as worthy as anyone else. I know from reading this thread that MG does provide these things on top of everything else I listed and did it when she was on benefits as well as now when she is on a tiny income. That's not poverty.

It's about abundance, as she says. It's not necessarily material abundance, rather, it's an attitude which - like education - no-one can take from you even if you lose everything else. It means the world is not only good for those who can win the rat race.

dangers

MG was that one of the Jennifer Worth books? I bought the trilogy of them last year for holiday - couldn't put it down. DH would laugh at me when I would carry this great heavy book down to read whilst sun bathing.